The effect of relaxation and mindfulness on female adolescent sports anxiety

The aim of this study was to investigate relaxation and mindfulness on sports anxiety in female adolescents.

The participants of the present study were 45 adolescent female student athletes from Tehran province with an age range of 11 to 15 years who were selected by convenience sampling. All subjects were physically and mentally healthy. The research samples were divided into three groups of control, relaxation and mindfulness and two experimental groups (relaxation and mindfulness group) were intervened. The Martens Competitive Anxiety Questionnaire was filled out by the subjects before and after the intervention. Combined analysis of variance test was performed using SPSS software version 24 to examine intra-group and inter-group changes.

The results showed that all interventions reduced physical and cognitive anxiety. The mindfulness group had a greater reduction in physical and cognitive anxiety, but the imaging and relaxation groups did not differ significantly in any of the research variables.

The mindfulness group had a greater decrease in physical and cognitive anxiety and their self-confidence scores were higher than the rest of the relaxation and control group.